Tutorial for Heart tart applique

Thought I should go ahead and post this tutorial , in case somebody wanted to try and make this dress before Valentines day. First, I wanted to say hi to all my new blog readers! and thank you for all the sweet comments you left me. It really means alot! Okay, first step to making the heart applique I created an outline heart on my embroidery software that was as big as my embroidery hoop.Then I randomly placed hearts within the heart outline. If anyone is wondering, the hearts I used were from www.emblibrary.com under princess hearts . It comes as a group, but I used my software editing tool to seperate each heart so I could place them one at a time. Once I had them placed, I changed the colors around. Colors that I used were baby pink, shrimp, maroon,hot pink and red.When I had my design ready, I then embroidered it out on a scrap piece of dark brown featherwale corduroy.I would suggest that you should embroider the outline heart with the same color as the dark brown corduroy(it will be easier to cover later with your satin stitching). Here's what it should look like when you finish your embroidery.

Next, you will iron on an "iron-on adhesive" bond(I used HeatnBond Lite) to the back of your heart and then cut it out following the heart outline stitch.

Peel the paper backing away from the "iron-on adhesive".

Using a temporary basting glue, start gluing your 3/8" rick-rack to the back side of the heart starting at the top center of the heart. Please don't use a regular fabric glue, cause that might hurt your machine when you sew through it.

After you have finished glueing, center your heart on your dress front pattern piece and fuse it with the iron. Put a piece of stitch and tear to the back side of your heart. Set your sewing machine to a satin stitch and start stitching around your heart. You want to cover your outline stitch but you don't want to cover the rick-rack.

Once you have finished your satin stitch, tear off the stitch and tear from the back and then you are ready to finish sewing your dress.

Hope this helps.Please let me know if you have any questions.